


If It Means A Lot to You

by RedBeardtheNotPirate



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Drama, Drinking, Drinking Games, Embarrassment, Fist Fights, Friendship, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Introspection, Multi, Naruto is desperate and Sasuke is distant, Nostalgia, Partying, Platonic Relationships, Seasonal Affective Disorder, Sentimental, Sentimental Naruto, Snowball Fight, Surprise Party, Winter, beer pong
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-13
Updated: 2016-06-13
Packaged: 2018-07-14 22:04:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7192631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedBeardtheNotPirate/pseuds/RedBeardtheNotPirate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You know you can't give me what I need,<br/>and even though you mean so much to me<br/>I can't wait through everything.<br/>Is this really happening?" - ADTR.</p><p>Naruto has never been good at saying goodbye, but Sasuke's never been good at saying anything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If It Means A Lot to You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stripeypirate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stripeypirate/gifts).



It wouldn’t be a party if he weren’t late. Let alone a party for him.

He looked past the crescent rum smile at the bottom of another empty cup to the other side of the room when he heard the door open; as if the sudden sweep of cold air across the floor hadn’t alerted them all to the bundled couple walking in from the powder.

_How long has he even been gone?_

Sasuke’s grand entrance left the party undisturbed for the most part once the murmurs of greeting, followed by an inebriated Ino’s loud complaint at the cold, died down. The miasma of bass and darkness created the perfect cover, or so he thought, for him and Sakura to slip over to the tiny nook of pinewood, Formica and ramen 12-pack boxes they called a kitchen.

Sakura knew better, a shivering pale mess in her damp red coat as she stumbled through the sea of elbows and greetings with her hand in Sasuke’s. She met Naruto’s bloodshot eyes from across the haze. Naruto stood expressionless as she let out a pneumatic hiss and mouthed ‘I am so, so sorry’ while shaking her head.

His best female friend was, these past four months, a machine with a built-in function of apologizing for his best male friend on these occasions. Naruto imagined Sasuke saying it so many times only to realize moreso tonight in the stupor he’d never heard it straight from the horse’s mouth. Only from the guilty girlfriend he’d introduced him to in the first place.

_How many times does she have to fucking apologize for him?_

Before he could see red, he could barely see at all— partly because he tried to keep his eyes on his two best friends in the kitchen after drinking everybody under the table— but mostly from Kiba tugging at his shoulder to alert him that their would-be beer pong opponents had climbed over the couch to sandwich Tenten in a vague and disoriented conversation about the lack of a fencing major at K.U.

Naruto was less known for his tolerance and more acclaimed for his ability to ignore vertigo to keep a party alive. But he knew as soon as he gained his bearings he would sooner take the nostalgic faintness in exchange for the sheer anxiety of newfound awareness.

He was alone at a beer-pong table with Kiba, whose stare he could feel digging into his shoulder waiting for him to turn. Those on the floor looked to be dancing merely because there was no space to lean on the wall anywhere and the chairs were all taken by the lackadaisical lost and found of tipsy philosophers and lightweights.

Naruto’s well-intended and not subtly labeled Going Away Party for Sasuke had slowly degraded into another clammy unkempt purgatory, one in a long line of the dance-die-rot-and-repeat pits of noise you could find anywhere on the block. The slow-sobering blond began to wonder which factor in his carefully planned party had driven people into boredom. His playlist, a rambunctious and almost desperately sentimental series of 90’s chart toppers, seemed tolerable enough to dance to but was not receiving the visual praise Naruto had hoped it would. He knew he wasn’t the most perceptive person even before a drink, relying on Sakura’s party sense for everything including his attire, an orange denim vest over a too-tight white sweater and jeans which Kiba had obnoxiously dubbed “Gay Aquaman.”

Still, he couldn’t swallow the cocktail bile of awkwardness and melancholy when he saw plain and simple how often he’d relied on Sasuke to bring a party together – which was saying something considering he’d barely been in the apartment all semester since he got new car. Naruto spent enough time sober grappling with the fear that Sasuke only ever indulged his friendship the past three years because Naruto had a car. It went well with a malleable mix of free-time and abandonment issues which only seemed to seep out when they were between passing out and throwing up – but Naruto pinned each conversation to his memory, a merit badge he used to remind himself he was special for the solemn fact that only he ever heard Sasuke open up, drunk or not. It held him over until Sasuke’s next wave of inheritance cleared, which made room for a car with which he could avoid campus all together for anything other than his last essential classes before early graduation and picking up Sakura for couples nights.

_He’s got her to bitch to, now… Who the fuck am I even?_

Red nosed and silhouetted, the couple emerged from the kitchen after a long conversation which seemed to drive away anyone approaching the nook as quick as they came. Sakura had already begun to sweat, yet her boyfriend was clean and pale enough to cast a reflection despite keeping on a thick black-leather jacket over his signature navy blue hoodie. Despite glassy eyes Naruto could see clearly enough that Sasuke wasn’t walking out of the kitchen, but rather being nudged out of it by his girlfriend in rhythmic shoves like an impatient tidal wave. Palm after nagging palm, Sasuke soon found himself an inch from the beer-pong table and unable to avoid Naruto’s punishing stare.

“He’s heeeeeere motherfuckers!!! All hail!”

Naruto’s voice, lousy with sarcasm only he thought subtle was, much to his luck, soon drowned in the cacophony of whoops and hollers from the crowd. Whether dumb luck or pity, he didn’t care, it felt good to have control over something when he realized he was relying on his hands to prop him up from falling down. Sasuke averted his eyes and raised his glass of dark-rum in the usual manner between bashful and afraid to deny his ‘friends’ a greeting with his girlfriend in flicking distance.

“Didn’t think so many people would still be here,” Sasuke said, implicatively to Naruto though his eyes still loomed over the crowd like a hawk over drunken worms dancing in the dirt. “Thought this thing started hours ago.”

“So you can tell time,” Naruto replied in a voice everybody heard but him. “Trying to wait out your own goodbye party, eh?”

Before Sasuke could even flinch at the blunt remark Naruto had stomped alongside the table to where he stood, his hand gliding the slick pine surface for support while his other reached into a cup for a damp white sphere.

“I suggest you put yer apparent powers of perception to good use, then… You n’ me. Band back together. We the duo knockin’ down all comers.”

“I thought you were supposed to be _my_ partner,” Kiba chimed in nasally from behind. His two best friends saw Naruto’s expression sink like that of an impatient babysitter before he could concoct an excuse.

“Hey, weren’t you the one who said you ruled the fuckin’ table so hard you’d make anyone next to you good? Err, something like that?” Even drunken Naruto could easily harp on drunken Kiba’s neediness to be seen as a king of the table to get his way, slinging an arm around Sasuke next to him who showed no signs of defiance. Out of her nature to pity the boy every party they found themselves at together, Sakura crept over to the other side of the table and held out a high five for Kiba to join him in “kicking her boyfriend’s ass one more time” in a game she’d never won.

Naruto ignored Sasuke’s scowling at Sakura—currently sharing a sweaty pre-pong hug with a boy who would hit on her no matter how many times she’d made it a point to nestle under Sasuke’s arm at every party. He saw what he wanted to see, and even knowing he was being an ass, the sight of his best friend beside him for one last night was enough to ignore anything and everything but the cups on the other end of the table.

“No scoops, no dry balls, winner keeps the table.” Naruto was somewhere between desperate and expectant for the match to draw a crowd, laying out the rules as loud as possible before dialing back the music one notch which felt like six with the ringing in his ears like cicadas.

_Nobody’s even listening anyway. They want that dancy techno shit._

After Sakura went, reasoning she wanted to ‘get the bad throws out of the way first’ Kiba practically tossed the ball into Sasuke’s shirt collar for him to catch with a wry smile. Before Kiba could revert to plugging an ear and rattling off excuses for his piss poor aim from drunkenness to the darkness of the room, Sasuke sunk the tip of the diamond with an effortless, soundless swish. Naruto made sure the room heard it, however, double fisting in the air and jeering right Sasuke’s left ear.

Nine cups and nine belches later Kiba begged for a rematch before he even saw Sakura scoot back to Sasuke’s side. Naruto turned his attention to cups in need of sorting while Lee dragged a grouchy Neji from his long awaited spot on the couch for the next match, keeping his eyes off the tongue kissing just to his left. Between Sasuke’s head start on the town and a penchant for straight vodka which seemed not to bother Sakura at all, the two sounded like a car wash and smelled like butane.

_You had all night to grope each other goodbye under some piss tinted streetlight. Is this really so boring for you two?_

Before he could go the usual route of moping, eyes on the table and thoughts drifting to his own streetlight moments he’d shamelessly fantasized about, Naruto’s eyes instead met Sakura’s; perturbed somewhere between confusion and hurt before Naruto realized he’d spoken his thoughts aloud for the entire table to hear.

_Oh my god. Holy shit oh my god I can’t believe I just fucking said that out loud holy fucking mother of god I –_

A metallic screech and a split second later the trio found themselves staring down at a high tide of light beer spilt directly on their legs, apparently the fault of Lee who tried to shift the table so slightly away from him and Neji to make room between them and the radiator.

Naruto sighed and shrugged thankfully as the table went into party-foul mode – Neji drunkenly staring at the mess, Lee apologizing one breath and searching for paper towels the next, Sasuke and Sakura patting themselves dry with napkins Tenten handed to them.

Between his worsening stupor and a reflex to keep things light, Naruto knelt down under the table while the surf of light beer dripped in noisy golden beads off the edge, opening is mouth with a giggle to drink the spill as it came. He nearly gagged between his own self-sustained laughter and the taste of table beer, gargling loudly with his eyes taught in Sasuke’s direction to gain his attention.

His best friend wore a countenance of disgust and disinterest, a familiar face which stung a little more in the moment as he turned to Sakura’s stains with no more than a mutter.

“Disgusting.”

Naruto lapped up the last licks of beer he could muster, diverting all of his attention in a death glare at the back of Sasuke’s head. He could feel Sakura looking past her boyfriend’s shoulder, her animal sense kicking in after so many years knowing the two of them to know a fight was coming.

“What’s disgusting,” Naruto said, “is having to watch you two suck face every five minutes.” Sakura found herself at a loss for words, a blush blooming on her face in the dark in fear of Sasuke’s newfound death glare at Naruto. “M’ just sayin’. You two’ve prolly shared more germs than I could after licking a thousand tables, but hey, so sorry the rest’v us are soooo disinteresting.”

“Shut up.”

Sasuke’s blunt retorts were infamous for their salt-in-the-wound big brotherly ability to end a conversation – that is, with anyone but Naruto, infamous for his ability to keep a fight going as long as it took for there to be a ‘winner’ especially while drunk.

“ _Shut up_ , ooh I’m so scared. Or I would be if I could ever hear you above yer muttering, dick face.”

_What am I even saying right now?_

The quiet rationality, a pebble in the back of the soggy shoe that was his brain, seemed louder the moment Sakura stood up from kneeling over the circlets of napkins to pull Naruto aside by the wall with a worried expression.

“You said you wouldn’t do this again.” Her whispering threw everybody but Sasuke off their trail, all huddled around the mess or ignoring it completely while Sasuke stared at Naruto from over Sakura’s shoulder. “You said you could pace yourself and you wouldn’t get like this. Yet every time, Naruto -”

_Shit…Am I really that wasted?_

Before that pebble could rattle around in his brain long enough to gain his attention, Naruto’s eyes inadvertently met Sasuke’s while avoiding Sakura’s guilty expression – that ever potent mix of utter contempt and complete disinterest which set Naruto off before he knew it.

Once he met that stare, he could feel it like one of the napkins dissolving in the pond of beer, that imaginary membrane between the halves of the brain which separated what one could say from what one should say. Still, knowing the barrier was gone somehow only made Naruto feel worse for what he said next, and how loudly he said it.

“Pardon me but, why is he NEVER the asshole anymore!?” His voice alone boomed above the music enough for Sakura to recoil and Sasuke to narrow his gaze. “Excuse me but no man, fuck it no for real. He just getsta be a fucking dick, non-stop, and you n’ I are just supposed to be like “That’s Sasuke for ya” like some fucking sitcom punch-line bullshit?!”

_I didn’t even mean that, did I?_

Sakura’s looming stare at her heels and Naruto’s tiniest gasp of a sober thought were too little too late to catch up with his mouth. “I’d be fine if he got to be queen bitch at his own party tonight, if, ya know, he actually showed up without havin’ to be dragged here like it’s the end of the world.”

Naruto’s right arm fell from pointing right in Sasuke’s face to his side. In no time at all, his left arm smacked the power button on the stereo behind him, casting a silence like death over the room. With all eyes on him and all sober thoughts dissolved to an ineffectual whisper in his mind, there was no turning back.

“Who else thinks it’s fuckin’ shitty to bail on your own party?!” He said while the room muted with scattered expressions of bewilderment and discomfort, his open hand stretched out to Sasuke as if chastising a witch at the stake. “Oh come on I know I’m not the only one thinkin’ this. What the fuck kinda jerk does it take on yer last night on campus to show up five hours late to yer own party, let alone dragged there by their fuckin girlfriend cuz ya just can’t be bothered. Why is nobody-”

“Naruto!” He could barely feel Sakura’s rough jabs to his shoulder, both for the lightness of her hands and the cloak of soggy nerves which left him musing how he could even stand, let alone yell.

“He can’t even apologize without you doin’ it for him.” Naruto couldn’t keep his eyes off of Sasuke anymore, noting no change in is expression or posture. “Is she gonna wipe yer ass for you in Seattle too? Huh?”

“Naruto,” Sakura pleaded. “You need to stop, now.”

“I can see it now – the two o’you fuck off into the sunset toward to the land of coffee and shitty startups or whatever and you can start a brand new life of pissin’ off a whole shitty office of people with her to apologize fer you all the fuckin’ way.”

 _Everyone seems to love you around here; by that logic you’ll probably get a promotion for it out there._ Naruto lost track of when his voice of reason stopped trying to slow him down and started preparing follow-up insults.

He felt a chill up his spin as Sasuke began to take slow, laborious steps to close what little gap there were between them, but he didn’t heed the warning; rather he used the anxiety to ready the last pouch of venom from god knows what recess of his mind this all came from. “

You get one last warning, you little idiot,” Sasuke whispered in a creaking voice. “Shut up, or I make you shut up.”

Like blowing out the fuse on a bomb, Naruto let out a piggish snort of a laugh, wiping spit and beer off his lower lip before speaking.

“ _Shut up or I make you shut up_. We get it, she writes yer insults for you too. Probably packs them with your lunch like your mom or something.”

“You need to shut. The. Fuck. Up.”

Naruto saw Sasuke could barely keep his hands off him from the way he began to point his index finger in his face with every syllable. But there was one more pocket of venom to spit, one Naruto’s last grain of common sense would’ve held at bay if it weren’t muted by booze and adrenaline.

“And you,” he said jabbing his finger over Sakura right back into Sasuke’s left shoulder, “need to stop treating my friend like your mom. Ya already had a mom who did a shit job teachin’ you how to treat people. There’s only so much more of you Sakura can fuck up.”

No gasps. No halted whispers or disjointed voices hovering ear to ear. The only sound after his remark registered with everyone but Naruto, the firm thud of Sasuke’s left fist square on Naruto’s slack jaw, muted by the plaster pound of the blond’s head smacking the wall behind him before he sank limp as a ragdoll to the chilly marble floor propped up only by the wall.

He was at eye level with Sakura’s shoes all of a sudden. In what felt like slow motion, he saw them pivot on her blood red stilettos, wondering if perhaps she’d turned away from the sight of him on the floor or to slap Sasuke square in the face. Contemplation faded when the throbbing sensation swelled up in Naruto’s upper lip, struggling to prop himself on his right arm while his left hand cupped his mouth and jiggled his front tooth, relieved to feel it firm in place.

Other feet began to rush into the fray. A pair of bleached white Nikes signifying Kiba stepped past the crowd. Sasuke’s black dockers suddenly flinched backwards, likely signifying Kiba was the only one dumb enough to try shove Sasuke in a misguided attempt to start something on Naruto’s behalf. Fortunately two others pairs of shoes seemed to dart up to either side of Kiba to hold him back, a basic black pair of boots signifying Shino and a lavender purple pair of converse which caused Naruto’s eyes to widen.

_Holy sh- Hinata…Fuck._

Craning his eyes up with what little strength he could muster, shoes turned into faces, and smack dab in the middle of Kiba’s inhuman snarl and Sasuke’s hawkish glower was Hinata – over-bundled, undersized Hinata holding onto Kiba’s right arm for dear life. Her moon-sized pupils hadn’t left Naruto for a moment, however, even while her proximity to Kiba seemed both to help hold him back and to hide behind him in fear of conflict.

“N-Naruto,” he saw her mutter from the seat of his ass until his eyes sank to feet level again. Fortunately for him, quick as he slumped over two pairs of shoes were on either side of him, matching pairs of hemp sandals innapropriate for the cold which could only mean his other roommates Choji and Shikamaru had come to his aid.

Surely enough the two hoisted Naruto up by his arms slung around each of their shoulders. Naruto could swear he left his stomach on the floor, though, vertigo knocking him near-limp if not for the friends on either side.

His vision, albeit foggy, returned to him at eye level with the crowd in time to see Sakura had wedged herself between Kiba and Sasuke – Kiba using every hand gesture known to man to convey his rage while Sasuke stood behind his girlfriend without so much as looking in Naruto’s general direction.

Before his hearing returned, Naruto’s last words before the punch played back in his mind on a loop in the moments staring at the side of Sasuke’s face. The full weight of his words had stolen all the blood from his feet to stand on his own, though he could feel in their nervous sway that Shikamaru and Choji were unsure of what to do with him beyond propping him up.

The two people he couldn’t bear to see him like this stood in front of a room full of bystanders, most of which gawked at the incident in passive amazement. Others muttered indecipherably to each other, likely unsure of whether or not to call the campus police or just leave the party all together.

_If you can call it a party anymore, Naruto thought while his upper lip continued to throb. This is all my fucking fault._

Naruto kept his eyes on his bare feet while he was yanked up, feeling the first ebb of bile in his stomach as he followed his toes gliding over the cool floor — Shikamaru and Choji either too impatient to walk with him proper or too afraid of his potential to vomit.

The ugly floor dissolved into a softer, friendlier more complacent gray and vertical turned to horizontal before Naruto realized he’d been thrown on his bed in his room by Shikamaru and Choji like hurried movers hauling a rug. He wondered if he had somehow hallucinated their presence since they were out of his room as quick as they came before he remembered exactly who they were and exactly how much booze was left to pilfer — that, and Naruto knew full well after that punch he was in no condition to be standing, let alone walking for a little bit.

The pain in his lip stung deeper the more he tried to shut it out until the throbbing began to lull him to sleep like a metronome; something to focus on like staring at a single point until everything else turned fuzzy around it.

What sounded like two voices permeated the wall and caused Naruto to snap up after closing his eyes. That moment could’ve been hours for all he knew. It was still dark outside his window and no one had come or gone unless he’d slept through them in his room. No music, so no party still going on in case some poor soul like Lee had made a desperate attempt to lighten the mood. His stomachache returned as he slung a foot off his bed and twisted gracelessly over himself attempting to stand. His knees felt like they would buckle at first but he was too curious to know who was not talking, but rather yelling at each other in the apartment when he’d thought the night was over, and he couldn’t hear well enough from the bed. He gained his strength back step by step until leaning against the door, clearly recognizing the tone Sakura used when scolding Sasuke.

“You absolutely did not have to hit him. Nobody forced you to do that.”

Naruto had almost forgotten his split lip before hearing that, the feeling it return coincidently with Sasuke’s retort.

“I have to wonder where this concern was last time he decked me.” “Don’t –” “In any other universe he was probably about to punch me anyhow.”

“Don’t,” Sakura said more gruffly, not to be interrupted, “Don’t start making excuses, let alone forget every moment I spent dabbing your bruises.”

“You seem to be,” Sasuke spat back at her in a tone low enough to strain Naruto’s ears but not enough to indicate any effort of whispering. “I’m sick of him dragging me into his drunken drama.”

“And I’m sick of having to pull you two apart like this at all! At least there used to be some period of time between this bullshit but now it’s back-to-back: the Sasuke and Naruto show because one of you always goes too far and neither of you seems to learn.”

“Neither of us?”

Naruto knew Sakura as the one other person who could get through to Sasuke, but of all of their fights he’d witnessed he’d never seen Sasuke so vocal instead of retreating when he knew Sakura was right.

_Maybe he’s right for once._

“Yes, Sasuke, neither of you,” Sakura replied unwaveringly in the face of Sasuke’s stubbornness. “You need to apologize. For Christ’s sake, I don’t even know why I let you keep me out as late as I did when I knew something like this would happen.”

“What’s that even supposed to mean?!”

Naruto had never once heard Sasuke actually raise his voice to Sakura until then, almost shivering behind the door if his nerves weren’t still soggy. Sakura muttered something to the effect of you-know-what-I-mean before Naruto heard her heels click for a few seconds and stop. He couldn’t pinpoint their location in the apartment but guessed they were standing somewhere in the mess between the couch and the chairs. He tried to convince himself she had walked over to the couch to sit down out of exhaustion or into the kitchen rather than to the door.

_I really fucked everything up, didn’t I?_

A long beat passed before Sakura broke the silence.

“You couldn’t just give him one night, Sasuke?” She sounded so much more defeated than ever to Naruto and he wondered if this was part of the power Sasuke had over her which he never fully saw. “You knew how much this meant to him.”

“So you’re saying it’s my fault because I know what he gets like? Because he likes to put on his little show and pull everyone to his side?”

“Sasuke.”

“He didn’t throw this party for me — he threw it for himself,” Sasuke replied bitterly. “He knows this isn’t my scene and still he goes out of his way knowing if I don’t give him what he wants he can put on his little episode and you and everyone else will defend him no matter how much of an ass he becomes.”

Naruto wanted to pluck his sweaty ear from the door and to crawl back into bed and knock himself out against the headboard in the hopes he could forget hearing any of this. He wished he was a blackout drunk like Ino in all of her sloppy serendipity, kneading his lower lip between his teeth trying to numb the pain.

“I’m not defending what he did,” Sakura said, “but you could’ve just… given him this one last night before I spend the next few months –”

“Cleaning up after his messes without me?”

“You know how much you mean to him,” she didn’t even hesitate, almost begging in her tone. “You know how much he means to you.”

“And what’s that?” Sasuke replied sharply.

 _I knew it. He doesn’t give a shit. He never did._ Naruto turned from the door and looked for his shoes before he settled on Sasuke’s Sonic the Hedgehog slippers Naruto bought him as a last minute birthday present last year.

_I really am an idiot._

The bright blue smiling hedgehogs moved silently, he hoped, over the floor to the window, as Naruto knelt on his bed and tried to slide the screen as quietly as possible without alerting Sasuke and Sakura. He cursed under his breath as he discovered the cold had frozen it shut then gave it a loud, forceful yank.

Naruto grabbed the first hoodie he could find under the sheets at the foot of his bed and leapt into the snow. The cold shot up his skin before he crunched away into the night.

 

* * *

 

He walked arduously over each back lawn as he struggled just to lift his legs out of the deep crust of snow. His slippers were already soggy like sponges while he staggered from solid bank to surprise plunges with snow up to his knees from the plows.

“Will you fuck the fuck off already?”

Naruto yelled at the snow, not caring if anyone in the parking lot on his left saw him. Anyone close would see fresh tears chapping his cheeks as he walked buried in his arms, eyes on his footsteps.

“Fucking prick’s probably still glaring at Sakura in the kitchen.”

Anger numbed everything below his knees before he peered to his right at the great lawn, the barren margin between the apartments and the freshman dormitories connected by a buried walkway in the distance.

The wind he felt earlier had died and left the air almost too dry to breathe. He stopped only to be distracted as the snow twirled down on the pitch-black backdrop, visible only through the queasy white streetlights reflecting on the Gen Dorm to the left of the wavy white field. Naruto peered out at where the walkway would’ve been, remembering the tepid September breeze on his face skating down the sidewalk in the first days of class as the wind whipped his ears deaf. He saw himself touting shameless camo-shorts, an orange hoodie vest and a sloppy white t-shirt in the years before he cared enough to buy new clothes, long before a shrill yet clingy pink haired girl started taking him to the mall.

Naruto felt puzzled as to why he would remember this since he used to look on the lawn and see the times he’d dragged Sakura and Sasuke out there for picnics and the like. Sakura would rave on her favorite authors Naruto swore he would read while Sasuke would hide from the sun beneath the latest media course guide. Those days were blurry to him now, but it didn’t take Naruto long to realize why he saw himself speeding down the stone aisle so clearly.

_That was the last time I was ever happy on my own._

“Those are my slippers, dumbass.”

Naruto jumped a little as Sasuke appeared without a sound behind him, expression blank with his hands in his coat pockets.

“Oh now you want your slippers don’t you?” The blond tried to keep trudging through snow but the icy sogginess returned to sting his feet from standing too long, frozen in place before Sasuke tugged him by his arm to the street. “I thought about you when I bought these for you, and everyone told me it would be hilarious n’ you never even wear them because you’re too god damned good aren’t you?”

“Idiot,” Sasuke replied as Naruto clumsily crashed into his side, barely standing. “We heard you in your room. You know you’re gonna have to pay for that screen you practically ripped off.”

“I bought these for your birthday,” Naruto slurred, refusing to use Sasuke for balance while frequently bumping into him. “Not that you ever got me anything but cheap booze for my birthday and you didn’t even wrap it!”

“Dude, they’re just slippers.”

Naruto plunged his hand into the snow, or so Sasuke thought before he received a face full of wet, plush hedgehog.

“Just slippers, man!” Naruto threw up his arms as he watched Sasuke stumble back and cup his gloved hands over his now slush-covered chin. “Just slippers. Just a fuckin’ goodbye party. Just somebody I stupidly thought was my best friend moving all the way across the fucking country all ‘f a sudden after disappearing all semester.”

_I had the words until you showed up, God damnit._

He could feel it like a hole in his skill, the thin line between forgetting and remembering the long, seemingly eloquent inner rant he’d prepared and swore he would hurl at Sasuke if given the chance. Instead he plunged his other hand into the snow while Sasuke cleaned his face and hurled the last slipper which hit Sasuke much more audibly right on his mouth.

In the first spark of sobriety he saw a familiar look on Sasuke’s face – the famous hawk glare which usually followed a prank gone too far – two narrow eyes which spoke the universal language of _run, while I let you_.

The blond flipped around and trotted clumsily back into the snow while Sasuke followed after him. He cut across the corner of the great lawn and paid no mind to Sasuke until he began to call after him, crunching in slow hiking steps behind.

“Get back here!” Sasuke caught up when he turned the corner behind one of the dormitory buildings when – boom – he got hit in the face and powdered clumps exploded from his forehead.

Despite his anger, or rather because of it, Naruto laughed hoarsely and obnoxiously when he saw the ball explode perfectly between Sasuke’s eyebrows.

“Come on, Snow White, bring it!”

“Naruto.”

Another ball, this time well in Sasuke’s line of sight, soared right past his face. Naruto found himself digging barehanded through the snow with heavy breaths at the point between rage and laughter as he chucked ball after ball in Sasuke’s direction until another connected with his jaw.

“Ok…”

Naruto gulped at the sight of Sasuke running towards him, kneeling like a soldier by a stray grenade as he nimbly packed a ball and hurled it at Naruto’s unprotected face.

“Blech!”

Naruto tried to run but Sasuke had already planted himself a few feet in front of him to barrage the blond. After a solid minute of effort they both gave up shaping the snow and instead began kicking mounds of it at each other until both succumbed to exhaustion.

The blond staggered to the foot of the dormitory and slid down with his back to the bricks to sit in the snow. He grinned impishly as Sasuke walked closer while patting the white off his jacket and stood with his back to the wall.

“Okay, okay I surrender, haha.” Naruto huffed between breaths while sobriety raced exhaustion in his lungs. “Man you should’ve see yer dumb face when you came around the corner and boom.”

“Yeah, maybe I look as dumb as you do on a regular basis.” Naruto saw Sasuke had already caught his breath and jabbed him in the back of the thigh.

“Well, you deserve it,” Naruto said unwittingly as his head thumped back on the brick.

“Maybe I did.”

He looked up in surprise before Sasuke slid down to sit beside him. When Sasuke had finished fidgeting Naruto could hear Sasuke’s phone buzzing faintly from his side pocket, surprised that his eternally busy roommate ignored a call for the first time in his life before he figured it was Sakura calling to see where they were.

“Lemme guess,” Naruto said and gestured to his pocket, “she hounded you to come get me didn’t she?”

“Actually, no.”

“Yeah, because you’d totally rather spend yer night with me out here gettin’ your ass handed to ya in a snowball fight, right?”

No amount of alcohol could deceive Naruto as he saw Sasuke turn to him. His expression was absent of anger, but focused and absolutely serious beyond a doubt.

“It’s a Christmas Miracle after all, then,” Naruto wheezed out.

“I’m sorry I hit you.”

The cold had helped Naruto forget about the stinging in his lip until just then. He lifted his right hand, flushed red from the snow to tease the wound, met with a wince of pain.

He wanted to cry the longer the highlights flickered in fragments he could no longer string together.

_String me along – Booze I bought for you – Hogging Sakura to yourself – Should’ve just hung out with people who actually give a shit._

“Well I’ve prolly’ got a giant blister or bruise thanks to you,” he said and looked at the trace of blood on his finger. “Too bad Sakura’s done cleaning up after us.”

He didn’t know where the words were coming from at this point. He shook between his knees and imagined this must be as close as he’ll ever come to knowing what amnesia feels like – the sheer desperation to say everything and the inability to form the words, somehow right there in front of you yet unrecognizable.

“Naruto.”

“I think she’s gonna hate me once you leave.”

There it was, out in the open to freeze and die. Naruto felt Sasuke glaring at the side of his face but couldn’t look him in the eye as he finally said what he’d feared all semester.

“That’s what you took away from eavesdropping on us?” “

S’not eavesdropping when you two r’ yelling in the kitchen,” Naruto spat. “You know it just like I do. It’s just the way we are as friends since you two finally, ya know?”

Naruto looked up out of the corner of his eye. With every unearthed insecurity he let slip he felt his chest begin to cave in. Now it was a matter of telling all before he lost the nerve.

“You two are my best friends but… You’re each other’s’ best friends now. That’s just how couples are.”

“You’re being ridiculous.”

“And you’re not telling me I’m wrong.”

“I shouldn’t _have_ to,” Sasuke said. “Naruto… I’m not like you in the way you really want. I can’t just say the things you do.”

“Ya, ya, it’s not your nature er whatever,” Naruto waved at him with a limp hand. “Believe me after all th’times I gotta hear it from Sakura how you can’t express yourself, believe me, I get it.”

“But that doesn’t mean I don’t care.”

The two of them met eyes with no excuses, Naruto attentively waiting for Sasuke to speak while the raven-haired companion seemed to struggle.

“You’re gonna have to learn this the hard way, but not everyone can have the long, bare-all conversations you and Sakura can. Not everyone is… I’m just not equipped for that like you two. I’m not built the same.”

“Sasuke…”

“I can’t keep track of things like you can. Sometimes I envy it, sometimes I’m exhausted when you do it and I’m made to feel guilty because I’m just not as nostalgic as you. But it doesn’t mean I’m not going to miss you.”

The last bit of liquor in his veins leaked through his eyes as Naruto wiped uninvited tears off his sleeve in hopes Sasuke wouldn’t see them.

_All I wanted was to know you cared. That I was gonna see you again._

“You will,” Sasuke replied before Naruto even knew he’d spoken aloud. “I'm not even gonna pretend Sakura won't give you my address in Seattle. You’ll probably be trashing my place before I even move in.”

Naruto couldn’t help but giggle as the tightness in his chest faded away, slowly but surely as he contemplated the genuine idea of Sasuke in some skyscraper loft; new booze on new shelves. Perhaps a drawer for Sakura’s clothes somewhere, a window overlooking a city he’d only ever seen in photos. He found himself clinging to the image as Sasuke wrenched him out of the snow to stand.

“You’ve gotta promise me you’ll do your own thing though,” Sasuke said, more protective in tone than Naruto had ever heard. “Don’t think you can live on my fucking couch if you flunk out.”

“Pfft, shows you asshole. I’m gonna get my own high rise and you’ll be the one out on your ass when your boss realizes what a useless douche you are.”

Sasuke held his gaze as Naruto smiled back, a knowing silence between them.

_I’m not just gonna chase you… I’m gonna get out of here on my own terms._

“Are you two idiots done yet?!”

Naruto peered over Sasuke’s shoulder to see Sakura jogging through the snow with a look of death in her eyes.

“Sasuke when I call you wondering where you ran off to after jumping out of the window, that usually means you pick up the god damn phone!”

Sasuke hung his head with a sigh as Naruto hiccupped and laughed at his misfortune. He leaned on Sasuke’s shoulder when he finally felt the cold numb his legs to noodles. Sakura, almost telepathically, had swooped to Naruto’s side to hold him up.

“Only you two would be screaming like soap opera teens one minute and be having some stupid snowball fight the next I sw- Naruto are you barefoot?!”

He was surprised as the two of them walked away with him between them that neither of them paid any mind to where they were, the dormitory where Sasuke and Naruto first lived and met Sakura just two floors up. More than that he was surprised he wasn’t so desperate to alert the two of them to this. Rather he was more comfortable having this moment to himself, looking left and right to see them both looking forward while he hung limp between them with a smile at a familiar image.

 

_I miss you guys already._

**Author's Note:**

> Update: 103 VIEWS!!! THE MAGIC HUNDRED ONLY A FEW ONE-SHOTS GET, and seven kudos on top of that!!! Thank you all so much for your support, I'm definitely going to upload more work. 
> 
> CONT'D: Hey you lovely people! I hope you enjoyed my first post on A03, I thank you all so much for reading it. 
> 
> I'm open to comments and critique as well as just hearing what you thought of my first one-shot! I'm currently working on a few long-form fics between workshopping my poetry and a short sci-fi novel I've been hashing through over the past two years, so expect more from me! 
> 
> Credit to the incomparable stripeypirate for beta-reading for me! This one-shot was a prompt she gave me I ended up making my own. If none of y'all know me I'm her infamous beta-reader/nagging editor mentioned in the end-notes of her excellent works. :)


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